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The Emperor Dezong of Tang had Zhu Ci and his assistants dragged before his throne. First though, he had ordered them beaten and all but a small sample of huo yao and one fire lance utterly destroyed. The samples were placed on the dais at the great Emperor’s feet.

Zhu Ci would have stood and bowed if he had the strength, but he had never been a well man and the beatings of the Emperor’s elite guards had left him without the slightest vigor. At least they had the decency to wash the blood from his body and bind his wounds before bringing him and his comrades into the throne room.

“Great…great Emperor, Zhu Ci gasped. “What have we done to offend you so?”

“Offend me? Offend me? You created this abomination and you think I am merely offended? It is only because of my tremendous desire for mercy and justice that you are still alive, monstrous cur.”

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“Wallace, I’ve seen your evidence and the supporting papers, but they don’t explain one critical piece of information.”

“Like if the Chinese had visited America frequently and in numbers from 1,300 BC until 500 AD, why didn’t they colonize, right Hendricks?”

This was a frequent argument between the British and Native American archeologists, however Hendricks had a point. Pictographic evidence of extended Chinese visits to North America included numerous artifacts in Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. So why did they stop?

“I’ve already introduced Dr. Christina Esquivel, Hendricks.”

“Charmed,” though the older man’s tone indicated he wasn’t. “What’s a geneticist have to do with archeology, Wallace?”

Christina looked forward to deflating this air bag. “I’ve just finished a five-year comparative genetic analysis between various Native American peoples and those from the Hubei, Hunan, and Yunnan regions of China. DNA markers are too similar to be the result of chance.

Meaning?” Hendricks’s voice was laced with anticipation and dread.

“Meaning,” Wallace continued, “that the Chinese did colonize America. Indigenous people like Christina and I are their descendants.”

The pictograph reminded me of articles I’ve read suggesting that the Chinese rather than Columbus or any other European or people from across the Atlantic, “discovered” America, perhaps sometime between 1,300 BC and 1,421 AD depending on which source you consider. Granted the information is highly speculative, but it makes a good basis for a story. The suggestion that there could be a genetic similarity between the Chinese people and Native Americans was also briefly mentioned in my source. To read more, go to DailyMail.com.

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) building – London – Found at manchesterhistory.net

Chapter Nine: Gardens of Peace

December – MI6, London

“Glad to see you up and about, Dennis. I hear it was a near one this time.”

Ian was sitting in the office of Benjamin Cross, Director of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Although Cross’s name and background were a matter of public record, at the agency he was always referred to only as “The Director” or “Sir.”

“Yes, so I was told. Thank you for your concern, Director. Doctors said that if either shell had hit just a few centimeters one way or the other, I would have been killed instantly.”

The Director chalked up Ian’s stoicism to the attitude of a career agent, not knowing that during his recovery, the man had worked out the events of the night of Hall’s death in great detail.

“I’m sure you realize I didn’t call you in just to inquire about your health.”

“He gave up his two mates so we should have this case tied up fairly soon, Ian.”

Police Lieutenant Winston Permalloo on the island of Mauritius where this whole mess began had finally gotten a break. A DNA sample of one of the four robbers who had been in Krista Bernham’s flat the night she was assassinated was matched up with a petty thief named Cassam Denmamode who was subsequently arrested in the aftermath of yet another heist. His attorney suggested he might be better off turning over his two accomplices rather facing a murder rap alone.

“What did he say about the fourth man, Winston?” Ian didn’t need to speak louder just because it was an international call, but decades of habit were difficult to break.

“Their boss, though Denmamode doesn’t know much about him. He planned all their jobs, emailed them their instructions for the robberies, and in addition to what they got for each haul, wired additional funds for them into an offshore account. The three we have here are small timers, but whoever put them up to this was a stone cold professional.”

“Qian.”

“Quite, Ian. It seems clear that the robberies were just a front for the real objective, the assassination of Ms. Bernham. Once that had been accomplished, the fourth man disappeared again and he stopped sending them any further crime plans.”

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It wasn’t easy for Tenzin Gyatso to have private moments, however he sometimes could appear in public as a typical Buddhist monk.

He was not a young man and he had lived a very full life. His life was still very full and rewarding, but there were times he envied ordinary men. He had never been ordinary, even as a child.

Today, Gyatso and his disguise were not without purpose. He was in Bangalore to visit Jamadagni Kapil, student of the late Nobel Prize winning physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. In private correspondence, Dr. Kapil claimed to have harnessed solar gravitational forces that allowed for the outlandish notion of time travel.

Almost six decades ago, Gyatso had made the mistake of trusting the American CIA, believing they supported Tibetan independence. Their involvement has cost the lives of thousands of resistance fighters. If Kapil could prove his theories were reality, then the fourteenth Dalai Lama would take a message to his younger self saying to refuse the American money. There was a better way.

I have only a passing knowledge of Buddhism, and of course I’ve heard of the Dalai Lama. I did a bit of Googling to discover, among other things, his given name (Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, born Lhamo Thondup, and shortened to Tenzen Gyatso). Apparently even as a young child, he lived an unusual and highly spiritual life. Also since childhood, he has had an intense interest in science.

The Dalai Lama was exiled to India in 1959, and in the 1960s, his administration received $1.7 million a year from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), supposedly to support Tibet regaining its independence from China. However, he later discovered that the U.S. Government was not concerned with Tibet, but only provided the funds as a tactic to challenge the Chinese during in the Cold War era. The Dalai Lama was later very critical of the CIA’s involvement.

I have no idea if the Dalai Lama ever goes out dressed as an ordinary monk, I doubt that he does, but the photo and my research led me to create this short and strange tale.

I also discovered that in 1983 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar won the Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler for the “theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars.” That has little or nothing to do with time travel and the character of Jamadagni Kapil is completely fictional. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar died in 1995 at the age of 84, but I thought his fictional student might adapt some of his work to offer the Dalai Lama a way to go back and change at least one thing about his past he most likely regrets.

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The 23nd Story in the Adventures of the Ambrosial Dragon: A Children’s Fantasy Series

Landon woke up and looked around. He was in the field behind Grandpa’s house. He could see Grandpa running toward him right now. On his left was Yao Jin, still unconscious. She was wearing some sort of black top and regular jeans and the boy couldn’t see any sign of her sword. On this right was…”Buddy!”

The Ambrosial Dragon was just waking up and he looked like Buddy again. Landon grabbed him and gave him a great big hug.

The Eighteenth Story in the Adventures of the Ambrosial Dragon: A Children’s Fantasy Series

Yao Jin stood on the rocky shore of a nameless island on the River Styx facing the demon. Her sword Demonslayer was drawn and at the ready, and she was desperate to see if the blade would live up to its name.

Demonslayer was a gift from her Grandfather Xun Qin, the most powerful sorcerer in the East for the past twenty generations, and he said it was the sister sword of Stormbringer the soul drinker, both having been forged in the furnaces of Arioch, Lord of Chaos and Duke of Hell.

As the young magician raised her blade, she could feel it vibrate in her hands and it moaned and wailed like a wraith in torment.